At the Heart of it All
by Lisa Telramor
Summary: It has never been a question if they shared a relationship for Riku, it has always been a question of where he fit into it. Four times Riku felt like an outsider and one time he feels like he belongs. SoRiKai


Riku was supposed to be working on the raft. Yesterday he'd cut more logs and today he'd snuck the ends of thick rope from Gramp's shed out back—no one used it anymore anyway—to lash them together. Sora and Kairi were supposed to be collecting coconuts to hollow out for water bottles, but as usual, they were goofing off instead. Some days Riku wondered if he was the only one to actually want to leave the island, to feel that pull in his bones to find new places beyond the expanse of ocean…

Sora kicked up sand in plumes as he ran shrieking from Kairi. Kairi had a stick wound with wadded up seaweed which she threatened to shove down the back of Sora's shirt.

Riku felt something twist in his heart as Sora tripped and Kairi descended on him, laughing. In minutes they were fighting over the seaweed stick and getting sand everywhere. Riku's eyes were inevitably drawn to where Sora's shirt bunched up along his stomach and how Kairi's knees ended up bracketing Sora's back when she finally pinned him. Their faces were red from laughter and sunlight and exertion, and they hadn't even spoken to him in the last hour since he gave them their tasks.

With a vicious jerk to tighten a knot, Riku dusted sand off his hands.

"So. About collecting those coconuts?"

Kairi looked up, grin triumphant as she squished the seaweed against Sora's face.

Sora flailed, sputtering, "Kairi, quit it!"

"Sora decided he was going to try and catch fish instead even though he's the best climber. So I caught him."

"Uh huh." Riku lifted an eyebrow, unimpressed. "And weren't you going to hollow out one of the coconuts on the ground while he was getting some from the tree?"

Her grin turned sheepish. "Weeeell, I can do that next since I finally caught Sora."

"Kairi, I'm getting sand up my nose, get off," Sora huffed.

Riku viciously stomped down the spike of jealousy he felt when Kairi got off Sora taking her time about it. There was something in how close they stayed even after she got off, like they were more comfortable in each other's bubbles than not. He could remember when only he was the one Sora let that close. The worst bit was he couldn't even figure out who he was jealous of.

Sora hopped up into Riku's space, waving a hand in front of his eyes. "Hey, earth to Riku! You're not that upset are you?"

Riku blinked and made himself look away with a snort. "You two are such slackers. At this rate we'll never finish the raft."

Sora looped an arm over his shoulder and Riku staggered as it forced him to stoop—he'd had a growth spurt lately and Sora had stayed short as ever. "Aww, we'll finish it Riku! Then we'll see all the worlds out there, every last one." He grinned, rubbing a sandy hand through Riku's hair. "It's supposed to be fun though. There's nothing wrong with a bit of fun."

"Yeah, yeah." Riku pushed off his arm. "But you two still need to get to work on those coconuts."

"Aye-aye Captain Riku!" Kairi said with a salute. "But maybe join us?"

They both looked hopeful and the twisted feeling in his stomach lessened for the moment. The raft still needed more logs, and he could cut wood and sit near them he supposed. "Fine."

As Sora raced Kairi to the coconut palms, Riku followed at a slower pace. They used to fit so seamlessly, so why did he feel like he wasn't quite part of the group anymore?

*s*r*k

Sora's an idiot and so is Kairi for not holding onto him. Riku scowls at the capsule Sora sleeps in. "Why the hell did you have to go running after me for?" Riku could take care of himself. Sora was the trouble magnet, the one that always skinned his knees and tripped over his own feet and would accidentally smack himself in the face with his own sword. (Sora didn't let the dark manipulate him, let the dark take over his soul, but Riku tries very hard not to think about that.)

Sora could have headed back to Kairi and be happy by now… Sora was ultimately the one who saved Kairi's heart. All Riku could do was cart around her body. And it was Kairi that saved Sora and kept him from becoming a heartless. (All Riku did was nearly destroy all three of them).

"I saw part of your heart today," Riku confesses. He leans his forehead against the capsule. If he pretends, it's a little like when they were kids and he'd talk about his secrets when Sora was asleep. (It's really nothing like when they were kids. But then nothing in the world is like it used to be so why would this be any different?) "He's just as dumb as you are." But that isn't true again, because Sora is smart in all the ways Riku isn't. He makes the worlds, wielding a keyblade, good and bad—friendship—seem so simple.

"I swear, the more bits of you there are running around, the more you seem to give your heart away." How Sora can do this without being afraid, Riku will never know. He guesses it's just the difference of Sora being so much lighter than he is. Kairi's light only compliments his rather than pointing out all the shadows like it would with Riku.

"Guess you won after all," he murmurs. They'd only ever been half serious about competing over Kairi. But all their play fights became a bit too real after leaving the Islands.

Some days he wishes he could turn back the clock. Maybe he'd be a bit kinder a second time around. The voice in his head he refuses to acknowledge begs to differ. Riku leaves the room before his regrets make that voice stronger than his resolve.

*s*r*k

It is a month since they returned home. Between enduring his parent's reaction to his return (positive, worried, and relieved to the point of grounding him for the rest of his life which quickly failed to apply the second Kairi and Sora knocked on the door to invite him to the play island) and readjusting to the slower pace of life on the islands, Riku can't help feeling like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's too quiet, his parents—it is strange to see his parents let alone have them hover over him whenever he is home—are being more attentive than he can remember them being in the last decade, and no one seems to remember anything at all. There are questions to answer and homework to do and people who had known him his whole life around him again. It feels like he never left. At the same time it feels a lot like one of his nightmares just before he lets the darkness into the world again.

The only place that feels right is sitting on the play island with Sora and Kairi. It's like a tiny world inside their world where it's just the three of them, grouped together like old times. Riku can sense them now and they feel more like home than home ever has.

Some nights Riku sneaks out to the island to sit on the Paopu tree and marvel that he'd been to some of the worlds out in the stars. Some nights Sora shows up too.

Today is not one of those nights. Today the sun is bright to the point where Riku wishes he still had his blindfold and hot enough to have him and Sora seeking out the shade. Kairi doesn't seem the least bit affected.

"You two!" she laughs. "You act like the sun's going to melt you!"

Riku covers his eyes and stretches out in the cooler shaded sand. "I've seen snow since I was last home. I've experienced true, cold winter."

"Yeah, Kairi," Sora says. "I met Santa. There was snow everywhere in Christmas town. It was all fluffy and white."

"And cold and wet," Riku mutters. "Besides, I thought Santa wasn't real?"

"He's totally real!" Sora protests. "I got to see his sleigh and everything. And his list. Betcha you're on the naughty list," he says with a grin.

"Well if you're hiding in the shade, I'll just have to train without you!" Kairi calls. She summons her keyblade easily now. Riku peeks through his fingers to watch her work through the forms he and Sora have taught her since their return. One on one, Kairi fights hard and dirty and somehow he never expected that. She hits as hard as Sora with just enough lack of control to make sparring dangerous.

Sora watches her too with a soft smile.

Riku closes his eyes again. "So. When are you going to ask her out?"

Sand scatters against his calves as Sora sputters and flails. "Wha? Why would I? No! I'm not going to—"

"Sora." The sputtering cuts off. "You like her. She likes you."

"You like her too!" Sora says, shoving at Riku's shoulder. When Riku opens his eyes, Sora's frowning down at him. "And she also likes you."

"You two like each other more."

Sora rolls his eyes. "You keep saying stuff like that like you're not equally important."

Riku shakes his head. Across the sand, Kairi lands a successful strike raid against one of the makeshift targets, knocking it to the ground. She dances around it with her hair sticking to her face from sweat and sand all over. "Did you see that?" she calls. "I did it!"

"Good job! If that was a heartless, it'd be dead!" Sora called back. He jostles Riku again, this time with his elbow. "I'm not going to ask Kairi out," he says for Riku's ears only.

"Why not?" It seemed like the logical progression.

"Because she's waiting to make the first move," Sora says like it's obvious.

Three seconds later, Kairi vaults through the sand to tackle them both. Riku tastes sweat and sand and ocean water on his lips when he wiggles free of her right arm.

"Ok," Kairi pants, "maybe you guys aren't such wimps after all."

"Too hot?" Sora asks.

"Way too hot," she agrees. She shifts so she can wiggle between them rather than sprawling on top of them. It is too hot a day for being so close, but Riku can't bring himself to move away. "You'll have to teach me later when the sun starts going down. Pretty soon I'll be the one kicking your guys' butts."

"Dream on Kairi," Sora laughs.

"I can do it!" She pokes Sora in the stomach and Riku can feel him twitch away from them. "You two spent so long sparring with each other all these years you never noticed how much I was learning." After another poke she resettles with her head pillowed on Riku's shoulder. "Besides, while you guys were gone I practiced with Titus."

"So that's why hit like a Large Body," Sora mutters.

"You're doing good," Riku says, "but your control could use a bit of work."

"Yeah, yeah." Kairi stuck her tongue out. "Titus says the same thing."

"You'll get better," Sora says. "Now you have us to work with you."

With a soft smile, she laces her fingers with Sora's. For the long moment before she does the same with Riku's, he feels like he is intruding. "A quick nap and them training," Kairi mumbles against Riku's shoulder.

Sora sends Riku a pointed look. Riku looks away.

It is still too hot to be so close together, but he waits until Kairi, then Sora's breathing evens out in sleep to inch away. It feels almost as wrong to leave them sleeping alone as it does to stay.

Dusting off the sand, Riku heads toward the water. When the others wake up, they'll be hungry. It's as good a time as any to see if his new skills make fishing any easier.

*s*r*k

There wasn't a clear tipping point that Riku can track. So much of his life has been wrapped up in Sora and Kairi for years that any further leanings toward them felt so natural he didn't bother to track them. Old patterns of school and rowing to the play island become meeting to walk to school and training on the play island. The complicated rivalry-friendship he felt toward Sora has lost most of its rivalry. Seeing Sora almost die at his hands is enough to stomp out any conflicting jealousy and frustrations that Riku retrospectively admits he had. From a somewhat older and wiser perspective, it was stupid to be fighting over Kairi at all; she is her own person, not an object to be won as she has taken to reinforcing in their sparring sessions.

Riku still likes sparring with Sora. It's something they can both understand the same way unlike how Sora gets history better in school or Kairi understands science or Riku enjoys the surety of math.

_(Remedial homework is spread across the floor. They have a lot to catch up on from their adventures. Riku likes math and it's still giving him a headache. He can only wonder at how Sora is handling it. They leave sorting through the assignments to Kairi. She can usually remember enough about each one to help them if they have problems and recommend where to start. She flips through the assignments, putting each one into a pile as she goes. "What's your favorite subject?" she muses, setting aside the literature assignment into her 'time consuming' pile. _

_Sora looks up from doodling on the margins of the math homework Riku had been trying to help him with and grins. "History."_

_"History? Really Sora?" Riku laughs._

_"It's like stories. Besides you'd be able to remember it if you thought about it like I do." Sora crosses his arms as Kairi laughs at them._

_"And how do you think about it?" Kairi asks._

_"I picture it like when we visit worlds. Like this line: "When the ships came, they brought knowledge of metalworking." If you look at it like the ships were gummi ships and they brought new ways to synthesize items like the moogles, it's way more relatable. Heck, maybe even some of the first settlers of the Islands were from other worlds." Sora shrugs._

_Kairi wrinkles her nose. "But it's so…dry."_

_"That's why you fill in the details. Give the people stories. It's fun."_

_"You're so weird."_

_Riku laughs and Sora tosses an eraser at him. "Hey, Kairi said it first!"_

_"You like math you can't talk about weird."_

_"Well what does Kairi like?"_

_"Science." Kairi tosses the last piece of paper on what she deemed Riku's 'easy' pile. "Not the creepy, morally questionable stuff, but just knowing how things work." She crosses her arms. "Magic's all well and good, but it's kind of cool to know why magic works."_

_"Magic's the exact opposite of science." Sora says like it's obvious._

_"But it isn't! I read a couple of books while I was at Merlin's and it compliments science. It's a lot of stuff about energy. And the magic we use is made from us and requires energy just like anything else."_

_"O…kay." Sora tips his head to the side. "You can like your science, Riku can like his evil math—"_

_"It's not evil, Sora."_

_"—And I can enjoy making stuff up to keep history interesting.")_

He likes sparring with Kairi too, but it is a different feeling with her. With Sora it is a rush, pure enjoyment that someone can match him strike for strike and the trust that Sora is having just as much fun and that neither one of them want to hurt each other. With Kairi it is full of wonder. Wonder at how she got so strong without them noticing, wonder that she forgave him, wonder at her brightness and how her smile right before her keyblade smashes into his is as disarming as a confuse spell.

Kairi treats them like they never were separated. She acts as the glue holding them together when Sora's high energy is getting on Riku's nerves or Riku's pessimism is bothering Sora. She holds their hands to bridge the three of them together because neither of them will cave to clinging to each other on their bad days, and on her bad days they are both there to offer their unique brands of comfort.

There is a balance settling out that Riku feels he should have noticed a long time ago. He wants to believe he isn't imagining it, but that sort of hope never stuck in his heart. Just like he'd wanted to believe Sora would never betray him or Kairi would choose Riku over Sora in the end. His inability to hold onto hopes had made it that much easier to manipulate the darkness in his heart. Slowly, Riku was fostering he hope that lines didn't have to be drawn. That three did not have to become two and one, but they could remain three no matter what direction their relationships took.

The tipping point had to have happened at some point before Kairi kissed Sora one night after training. It had to have happened for Riku at that moment or somewhere on the walk home for him to have kissed Sora, all tangled up emotions and self-doubts clawing at him from the inside as he was unsure of who he had envied more with the earlier kiss.

The tipping point had to have long since passed by the time Sora kissed back and insisted they backtrack to talk to Kairi.

"I told you," Sora said when Kairi shocked Riku into a stupor by kissing him too.

"You never told me anything," Riku said when he could string words together again.

"I told you Kairi liked you and was waiting to make the first move," Sora said. "You just didn't believe me."

Kairi sighed like they're both unruly children and pulled them in for a hug with Riku squashed in the middle. "You two," she muttered. It was fond though, had been fond, remains fond when she says it even now.

Riku still can't put his mind around it, a week in, that they love him as much as and in the same way as they love each other. It still trips him up a bit to realize how long it took him to figure out how he felt about Sora considering he can't place when the feeling started.

It's a new challenge to push that doubt back, the feelings of "why me?" and "they'll leave me" whenever they're apart. But never when they're together these days, which is a start. Riku helps Sora with his math problems and listens to Kairi shift around their papers to make school work more interesting and lets himself hope that it's real.

*s*r*k

It is unseasonably cold for Destiny Islands, cold enough that making one big bed from their sleeping bags to curl up under in the tree house feels justified. It was Sora's idea, of course, but it was Kairi that suggested a sleepover on the island for a date.

They shiver around a fire on the beach. It isn't cold enough for frost or even to see their breath, but the breeze of the ocean saps warmth from them and gives Riku the perfect excuse to drape his arms around Sora and Kairi's shoulders. In return, they help keep the chill from reminding him too much of travelling through the dark where an indefinable chill sank into your bones and dulled your senses into one steady ache.

The only good thing about the weather is that it brings the stars into sharper clarity.

"I only half believed we'd get to explore other worlds," Sora says above the soft pop and crackle of burning wood that had been exposed to too much salt water over the course of its existence. "It felt like a dream at first, like it wasn't real at all."

"It always felt too stifling here," Riku murmurs. "If there hadn't been something out there, I think I would have made someplace of my own."

"I think I wanted to find a place that felt like home once," Kairi says, adding her own impressions to the mix. "Back when we first started dreaming up building the raft, Destiny Islands didn't feel like home."

"Do they now?" Sora asks.

"Yes." Her head tilts against Riku's shoulder. "I think it's more because of you two and the memories we have here than the Islands themselves."

"I'm still not sure I can stay here," Riku admits. "Especially now that I know what's out there."

"Lucky us that we're keyblade bearers," Sora grins. "That as good as given we'll go to other worlds again."

Go to other worlds, but Riku hoped it wouldn't be as nerve wracking as before when one or both of his friends were in mortal danger no matter how he tried to influence things from the shadows.

"And next time we'll go together," Sora says like it is a promise.

"If every star is a world, we'll never visit all of them," Kairi says. "But that's kind of exciting too. There's endless possibility and things to see."

Riku closes his eyes to feel the calm around him and the peace of the moment. It isn't something they have often. A loud yawn from Sora's direction has him smiling. "Tired?"

Sora grunts. "Not that much…okay, a little, and it's cold even with you and the fire acting as space heaters."

Riku snorts and he feels Kairi's near-silent giggles Shake against his left side. He slits his eyes open to take in Sora's pout. In the fire light his skin looks more golden than normal, and his hair closer to Roxas's blond. The comparison doesn't leave him feeling conflicted for the first time in a while. Perhaps he is moving past his regrets. "Bed?" Riku asks.

"Bed."

He stretches and stands. The cool air makes him shiver without Kairi and Sora trapping heat against his sides. He holds out hands to pull them to their feet.

They put out the fire with a blizzard spell—Kairi's, still wild and overpowered for the effort—and climb the ladder to the treehouse. The sheet door is pushed aside and the large sleeping bag bed they'd made up is waiting to crawl into.

Sora dives onto it, rucking up the neatness.

"Shoes. Off," Riku says.

Sora sticks his tongue out as he kicks off his shoes toward the space that isn't taken up by the sleeping bags. Riku and Kairi leave theirs by the doorway and climb into bed in a much more controlled manner.

It has been years since they did this, not just due to their adventures, but puberty and self-awareness had ended group sleepovers at some point. Riku can't remember if it was a parental decision or if it was a conclusion they came to on their own. At any rate, he knows that they'll be in trouble if their parents find out because they're far from children these days. At least their parents have stopped checking in the middle of the night to see if they've vanished again.

"Remember last time we did this?" Sora asks. He squirms under the blankets like he's not sure how to position himself. Somehow Riku is still in the middle and Sora leans against him to include Kairi in the conversation.

"Last time we did this, you stole all the blankets and drooled all over my shirt," Riku replies drily.

Sora smacks his shoulder. "Hey! No, I meant don't you remember that's when we made the promise to go to other worlds?"

"Is that when it happened?" Riku remembers the crick in his neck the next morning and his arm full of pins and needles from Kairi using it as a pillow more than the conversations the night before.

"It was," Kairi chimes in. She's already maneuvering Riku's shoulder into acting as a pillow again. "We told legends and folk tales and you guys got embarrassed when I said we should all share a paopu."

Riku blushes at the thought of sharing the fruit between the three of them and Kairi laughs.

"See, just like that!" She grins. "You should use those math skills to figure out how to divide a fruit up evenly."

"Stop being so embarrassing, Kairi!" Sora squeaks. "We're going to be together even if we don't eat a fruit!"

"And who's saying cheesy lines?" Riku says, but he is thinking of back when he taunted Sora with the paopu fruit, tossing it at him and telling him to share it with Kairi. He'd really thought back then that Sora and Kairi would end up together. Kairi had made Sora that shell charm; Riku'd seen her working on I t when she thought no one was looking and Sora…. Sora had made that drawing in the Secret Place that gave Riku the idea of teasing him with paopu fruit in the first place. Back then he had felt left out. Sora had always been by his side so it hurt to see him invested in someone else. And Kairi had been one of his first crushes. Combined with dreams of leaving the world and feeling stifled by Destiny Island's slow pace, Riku wasn't surprised that he'd turned bitter. It was more surprising to find that somewhere along the way that bitterness had left him. It had been a long time since he felt as content as he did lying between them without doubts that he was wanted or needed. Sora and Kairi had seen him at his worst and his best and accepted all of it.

"He's spacing out again," Kairi says in a fake whisper.

"Should we poke him?" Sora whispers back.

"I'm listening you know," Riku says.

"He lives!" Kairi laughs. She burrows close to his side, trapping one arm.

"Ha ha, very funny." He tries very hard not to think about where his arm is trapped against.

"When we travel, we should do this in every world," Sora says. His hair tickles Riku's jaw as he uses Riku's other shoulder as a pillow like Kairi did. "Just the three of us, looking at the stars."

"I'd like that." Riku wiggles until he can put arms around them rather than have his arms trapped. It feels like being protected and protecting them all in one. "Goodnight."

Kairi laces her fingers with his and Sora throws one leg over both of them as he settles into a comfortable position. Riku has no doubt they'll wake up with Sora sprawled on top of them or hogging all the blankets again. It's nice though. It's a feeling Riku could get used to, one that he's stopped squishing out of sight since Kairi and Sora made it clear they wanted him as well as each other. Riku smiles and lets himself drift to sleep.

* * *

_AN: Written for the prompt: Any, any m/m/f ot3, 4 times he felt like the outsider in the relationship and one time he didn't feel that way at all_


End file.
